


Shutter

by witchsoup



Series: Catching Flies [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, M/M, almost entirely accidental model!Ron, eccentric photographer!Blaise, manager!Pansy, very brief appearance of clairvoyant hairstylist!Luna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 19:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14456259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchsoup/pseuds/witchsoup
Summary: "Make it fashion," drawls Blaise, before he pushes Ron into the pool.





	Shutter

**Author's Note:**

> This is almost entirely unedited and 100% of what I know about modelling is from various Countries' Next Top Model so don't expect this to be even 1% accurate ok

He's doing his best not to curl his shoulders in, to cross his freckled forearms over the pale, goose pimpled planes of his chest, and look as if standing in his packet-fresh Calvins in the middle of a crowded room is exactly what he planned to be doing from the moment he stepped off the plane.

The job - the first one, the proper one - was Bill's doing, of course, because Ron can count on one hand the number of friends his brother has who don't have irritatingly glamorous or successful careers by turns. Bill's friendship circle is roughly the size of the Equator, which comes in handy when his little brother is on the job hunt. Ron is a moderately accomplished mixologist, with big hands and a goalie's unerring ability for catching shit flying determinedly towards his head.

His tips are surprisingly shitty, despite his almost perfect recall of even the most complicated drinks order, even on a Thursday night when the glossy young bankers are aggressively trying to wash away the reality of a five am start, even when they're slurring around their private school vowels - my, what big ears you have - and calling him mate like it's an insult.

On a Tuesday at eight pm he's doing everything but wiping down glasses with a rag. The bar is dead, by London standards, and there's a woman clacking rapidly on a phablet not three feet to his left. Her glossy black nails are impractical, trimmed with sharp, gold-tipped points, and she seems to be racking up quite a word count despite the awkward press of the pad of her finger against the screen.

Most impressive, though, is the fact that in all the time she's been typing, she hasn't looked at the screen once.

No- she's looking at him.

Somewhere between her offering her hand like he's expected to kiss it, and Ron's palms itching to cover the front of his boxers as if he has some claim to modesty, there have been words thrown at him like _gawky, gangly, asymmetrical._

However, there has also been a heated debate in which Parkinson has declared that the only way they’ll get near his hair with a bottle of bleach is over her dead body, and Pucey has made various positive noises over the colour of his eyes.

Something in him tells him his father isn't going bald because of age, no - it's sixty years of grazing his scalp off door frames. Models are supposed to be tall, he reasons, but not like him. He lacks the sharp jaw to balance out the extraneous four inches.

Pansy - he Googled her in the snatched moments between flopping down on his bed and passing out still half drenched in draft lemonade - is the only familiar face in a crowd of sleek, important looking people in surprisingly flamboyant clothes.

"We'll have the contracts messengered over to you tonight. This will be your mother agency, of course, but I have a couple of contacts in New York and Milan who would be very interested in signing you before fashion week-"

"-he doesn't know how to walk, Pansy, look at that posture-"

"We can teach him, Adrian, have a little fucking faith."

"Your Tom Ford obsession is wearing a little thin, Pansy."

The label on the inside of his boxers tickles, Ron thinks. Simultaneously too much and not enough to warrant the price tag.

His pay-as-you-go is quickly replaced by a shiny new iPhone for personal calls, and he's told he has a phone for every city in which he's signed. There are six. _Six._

It takes two weeks to learn who is whom, signing his name in self conscious chicken scratch on dozens of dotted lines. Sunday lunch is unceremoniously interrupted by his manager's palm pressed urgently against the horn of a white Range Rover, and Ron is bundled into the back with the same amount of care as is given to the suitcase full of clothes he's never seen before.

He shoots for Nylon and the fashion world, which he shamefully admits in countless interviews he knows nothing about, _ignites._

It's not the same kind of fame that stalks Harry. Ron walks down the street unencumbered with nothing but a credit card in his pocket, a skeleton key to unlock the city. Any city, every city.

Over the course of six months he builds up enough air miles he's surprised he hasn’t acquired some sort of spider-like radioactive prowess. LA welcomes him with open arms, proffering any number of inedible foods and Instagram opportunities for his personal brand.

He's starting to get into the swing of things, and then he receives a practically incoherent email from Pansy. The saliva in his mouth evaporates around the shape of the words 'Vogue Italia.'

The air is different in the lakes, filtered through the jagged mountains and a barely-there string of cloud cover.

His hair is being determinedly slicked back by a woman who introduces herself as Loony, her perm bisected in pastel pink and yellow which gives him a hankering for Battenburg cake. The huge, glittering sunglasses propped on her head don't move an inch, even when she bends to his eye-level.

For the past six weeks he's been peeing like Ginny post-freshers, oversized bottles of mineral water and odd-smelling green juices pressed into his hands at every spare moment. The makeup artist has been told in no uncertain terms if he covers up the freckles, they may as well pack up and head home.

Pansy coos over the signature Ronald Weasley look, the signature sulk, a byproduct of being second-to-youngest, and the lowest in the familial pecking order. This shoot, though, is something else entirely. A crumbling, ancient looking Italian manor house with a dilapidated pool, untouched stables, miles of dusty mahogany flooring and hundreds of exquisite oil paintings, comprises an entirely different picture.

Loony's head whips up a full ten seconds before _he_ walks into the room, before the respectful hush has had a chance to fall, and before Ron realises that Google simply has not prepared him for flesh-and-blood fashion royalty. Wikipedia hasn't done Blaise Zabini justice.

Ron has been informed in no uncertain terms that he does not speak to Blaise Zabini unless spoken to. That the man is the artistic lovechild of Annie Leibovitz and fucking Michelangelo, and Ron is permitted to showcase no more personality than a block of marble.

He may not have an artistic bone in his body, but Ron is very good at doing what he's told, even if the telling is simply putting him in a certain cut of clothing, or shoving him onto a rooftop versus a field, versus the darkness-dampened tube tracks in a very specially commandeered Oxford Circus station.

The disdainful slant of Blaise Zabini's mouth isn't telling him much other than the fact that whatever he's looking for, Ron doesn't have it. He races through a stock of poses, decadent and self-deprecating, grin fake and static over the collar of his stiff white shirt.

When Pansy races forward with the makeup artist whose arms are full of blotting paper and translucent powder, her face is pinched.

"Zabini isn't happy."

"Zabini isn't the one having to pretend he's having the time of his fucking life sweating on a broken sunlounger-"

"He wants to speak with you."

"Fuck."

Parkinson grabs his hand unflinchingly, helping him up with surprising steadiness despite her small frame.

"Don't claim you know what you're doing, because every single person here, especially Zabini, knows you're making it up as you go along. Listen to what he has to say, and I swear to god if you get short with him, you will be dropped from my books faster than you can say ‘Taxi for Weasley-"

"Ronald Weasley." One brown, manicured hand is offered to him, each finger weighted with silver rings, while the other clutches a camera like it weighs nothing. "The Brixton boy wonder. Exactly what is so wondrous about you?"

"It's a privilege to meet you, Mr Zabini-"

"Mr Zabini, you've actually managed to make me sound boring- my name is Blaise, for fuck's sake, Mr Zabini is my stepfather's name."

Pansy's laugh is on the wrong side of girlish delight, shrill enough the skin around Zabini's eyes tightens just slightly. His lips, full and prominent on his pristinely clean-shaven face, purse.

"Miss Parkinson, go and tell makeup I want to try something different. Tell them I want to see what they have in terms of red lipsticks."

When the makeup artist's trembling assistant offers up a glossy red YSL specimen for inspection, he simply looks at her expectantly, seconds buckling under the intensity of his exasperation.

"Mirror. Now."

Blaise snatches the compact from her hand, pulling the cap off the lipstick and dropping it to the floor. He's swiping it over the swell of his bottom lip when an underling rushes to pick the plastic up from the grubby tile.

"Don't sue, Weasley," he says, and presses his mouth to Ron's own.

He's focused more on the press of a lens cap into his right rib than the inexplicable sweetness of Zabini's kiss, his mind stuttering over the presence of so many people, of the slick slip and waxy taste of the lipstick, of the fact that his tongue has found its way into Zabini's mouth.

When he breaks away, it takes Ron a moment to open his eyes.

"Whose fucking idea was it to unbutton the shirt?" Zabini asks of nobody in particular, grabbing Ron's collar and fastening each button with practiced ease.

One hand pressed against Ron's shoulders, Zabini's eyes flick over him, quickly, almost too quickly over the fastening of his grey checked trousers, and Ron responds by churlishly shoving his hands in his pockets.

"What colour is your underwear?"

Ron blanches.

"W-what?"

Blaise turns, speaking rapidly in Italian to the man who has silently appeared to take the camera out of his hands, to guide Ron gently to a marginally more secluded dressing area and into a pair of distressingly tight white briefs.

His patent leather dress shoes are swapped out for a pair of bright white tennis shoes, complete with tube socks.

Zabini's left eyebrow looks gently amused by the situation.

There's yet another camera in his hand, and he quickly snaps Ron's look of utter confusion.

"I want to try something different, if you'll allow."

Folding his arms over his chest only to be rebuked by a swift cough from Pansy, Ron replies without heat, "Don't think I have much choice."

"Do you trust me, Ron?"

Shrugging, he looks to Pansy for encouragement.

"Sure, you're the photographer."

"Good." Zabini's smile is dangerous.

"Make it fashion," drawls Blaise, before he pushes Ron into the pool.

The September cover is a lushly saturated shot of Ron emerging, looking thunderous, from the algae-encrusted pool, lips smudged with the imprint of a kiss like a threat.


End file.
